What a truly wonderful thing this is, made me cry…loneliness is a killer and bringing young people together with lonely elderly folk like this is just marvellous. What they can give each other is priceless. Wow, thanks for sharing this Rachel…

I once coordinated a group of urban high school students from Philly who were helping elderly immigrants from China to improve their English and learn enough civics to pass the citizenship examination.

It was an amazing experience. Sometimes I would just look around the room and see the kids and the elders just enjoying the hell out of each other, struggling to communicate, sharing stories, and exploring worlds so different vastly from what they had known previously, and have a similar feeling to the feelings that video evokes.

It was part of a larger program called SHINE – where college students are trained to help elder immigrants get citizenship. I”m pretty sure that SHINE is still around, but the program for high school students, unfortunately in not being part of the larger mission, didn’t get sustained funding and it folded shortly after I left the program.

Thanks for linking that video – it brought back some really beautiful memories for me.